Sharing some of what I talk about, and learn, in my private therapy sessions. I am blessed with a wonderfully supportive psychiatrist who provides me with both medication advice and therapy. I am hoping my experiences in my sessions can help someone else.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Anxiety

Caution, may trigger:

Anxiety, ANXIETY, anxiety!!! I can't breathe, I'm suffocating, AnXiEtY. I'm doing nothing, yet I can't breathe. Anxiety, I am thinking of nothing except being able to breathe. How can it be that I cannot breathe? Nothing set it off. It's being happening off and on ALL day. My lungs will not fill with air. I cannot breathe. There is a giant sitting on top of my chest. My lungs are being crushed so hard I cannot get air into them.

My shoulders are tight and raised to my ears. My tongue is pushing hard against the backs of my teeth. My teeth are clenched tight, shut, closed. My hands are tight with the fingers stiffly closed. I want to run, but I have nowhere to go. ANXIETY!!!!

I have chest pains., I am hot. My face is red. I smell sweaty. I am sweating. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I visualize someone strangling me, me placing a rope around my neck, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. I want to place rope around my neck. I want it to end, the rope will truly suffocate me. The rope is drawn tighter and tighter and tighter. It feels the same as anxiety. It will be over if I do this. It feels like my anxiety and depression will never end unless I end it.

4 comments:

I hope that you have made it to a better moment in your day - even if it was just for a moment - a moment when you could breathe and see that you will be able to breathe again. I have spent many hours wondering what I hate more the anxiety when it stops my lungs and makes me sweat or the depression when I deel like I can't even get out of bed or stop crying.

Oh Aqua, I know this feeling all too well. When I'm disabled so much by anxiety that I can't even do what most people do unconsciously, breathing, I too wonder what's the point of going on. But it passes. This too shall pass.

About Me

I am currently a lost soul on its quest for freedom. I have a mental illness; Chronic Major Depressive Disorder. My version of MDD sits somewhere in the Bipolar Spectrum, meaning my mood cycles between severe depression and then up high, very high, but not high enough to be considered hypomania. I am hoping to help myself and others who read this blog both understand this illness better and to learn something about ourselves in the process.